Blog / Tag / "old fire hall"

It’s Culture Days in Canada! On September 28, 29 and 30, culture is taking over from coast to coast to coast, and dozens of spots around Whitehorse will be offering Yukoners an incredible variety of fun, FREE activities.

With free museum visits, trolley rides, live music, family-friendly art-making activities, artist demonstrations and studio tours, book readings and spoken word performances, and Doors Open events at historic sites across the city, there’s something to pique the interest of every kind of culture lover.

At the Yukon Arts Centre Art Gallery, we’ll be hosting a very special Culture Days Kids Kreate session. On Saturday, September 29 from 1:00 – 4:00 pm, local artist Helen O’Connor will be teaching us the traditional art of wet felting. We’ll also be taking inspiration from the colourful fibre art of Louise Hardy, on view all day in our Public Gallery. (All welcome - Kids Kreate is drop in; all kids must be accompanied by an adult!). Kids Kreate is generously sponsored by Lotteries Yukon.

If you’re downtown, stop and visit the Old Firehall and get to know the cultural community of Whitehorse. From 12:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, there will be great activities for the whole family including: live music, face painting, the Cultural Expo, a market by the Potluck Co-op Society, and lots more. Doors Open Yukon will give visitors a chance to visit local historical sites all weekend, free of charge. And for the curious, our famous Mystery Tour will be departing from the Old Fire Hall at 11:50, 1:40, and 3:30. Each tour is under two hours and will give tour-goers some fascinating behind-the-scenes looks at a number of cultural destinations across the city.

While you're out exploring the city, keep an eye out for Bright Spots:

Venues displaying these stickers are Culture Days destinations, open to the public and offering great events! You can access the full list of events for the city here. With so much to do, why not plan your weekend using the handy My Culture Days tool? Sign up and you can create, print and share your own personal event schedule so you don’t miss a moment of fun.

This is going to be great! Animator, Jay White, went over the Chilkoot Trail as part of the Chilkoot Trail Artist-in-Residence! He just got back!!
Check out his Talk about his experience, and some AWESOME art, at the Old Fire Hall, 5pm, THURS, Aug 16. Should be a great time!

Jay White likes to bring his imagination
to life through oil and watercolour paintings, animated
short films, and through interdisciplinary collaboration
with other artists.

His current animated short film, The Perfect Detonator,
premiered at the St. Louis International Film Festival, and
is now showing in festivals across the world.

THE CHILKOOT TRAIL ARTIST-in-RESIDENCE is a collaborative creation from Parks Canada, the US National Park Service, the Skagway Arts Council, and the Yukon Arts Centre!

The Yarn Bomb Yukon Collective and a wonederful crew of local volunteers have been busy sewing together the yarn bomb for the DC-3. You're invited to help sew a little or a lot or just stop by to see how the project is going.

To learn more about the project, please check out Yarn Bomb Yukon's blog, twitter and facebook for all the updates.

Curious about performance art? Want to add performance to your art practice? Stop by the Old Fire Hall Sunday evening, Feb 12, 7pm, for a talk on performance art by Lori Blondeau. Lori will give a talk on how she uses performance art in her practice and show images and video of her past work.

The images of the Indian Princess and Squaw have had a significant impact on societies’ perception of Indian women and serve as inspirations for most of my work. Surprisingly, we still see popularized images of the Indian Princess being created by both native and non-native people. You can find these products being sold in Indian Museums and souvenir shops across North America. These are testament to the general public’s idealized perception of beautiful Native women as being exotic and hard to find – virtually non-existent. The other side of the Indian Princess is, of course, the squaw – another of societies’ iconic scapegoats meant to desensitize both the general public’s view of Indian women (their political, historical and social issues as well), and the self perception among Native women themselves.
My work explores the influence of popular media and culture (contemporary and historical) on Aboriginal self-identity, self-image, and self-definition. I am currently exploring the impact of colonization on traditional and contemporary roles and lifestyles of aboriginal women. I deconstruct the images of the Indian Princess and the Squaw and reconstruct an image of absurdity and insert these hybrids into the mainstream. The performance personas I have created refer to the damage of colonialism and to the ironic pleasures of displacement and resistance.

Biography

Born and raised in Saskatchewan where she is member of the George Gordon First Nation Lori Blondeau draws from her family history in the scripting and design of her campy, satirical, performance art productions. Blondeau’s stage persona ‘Belle Sauvage’ is loosely based on Indigenous women who performed in Wild West shows and Vaudeville acts in the early 20th century, and spoofing the 50’s film Calamity Jane, in which Doris Day performed as a cross-dressing, gender-bending white cowgirl. Blondeau’s performance art remix of the
Wild West presents a post-colonial reading of the narratives of Hollywood white pop culture. In her work she addresses the importance of maintaining one’s identity and beliefs as a First Nations person, and living and working in mainstream society. Blondeau confronts and co-opts conventional stereotypes in her pointed and disarmingly humorous take on contemporary art and society. In addition to her active exhibition career Lori Blondeau is the former director of Tribe, a First Nations arts organization in Saskatoon. Through this organization and related activities she is in close contact with the Indigenous art communities in Canada and the US. Most recently she has relocated to Pauma Valley, California.

Admission is by donation.

This presentation has been made possible thanks to the Yukon School of Visual Arts' Visiting Aboriginal Artists Program. For more information about this program, please contact info @ yukonsova.ca